Institute raises warning about children raised away from parents

OTTAWA – The Ottawa-based Institute of Marriage and Family Canada (IMFC) warns government-sponsored early learning programs may harm the integrity of developing children.

In an Aug. 30 article, IMFC research and communications manager Andrea Mrozek quotes Canadian developmental psychologist Gordon Neufeld of The Neufeld Institute who says socialization is more than being able to get along with others; it means being true to oneself.

Socialization has different meanings, Mrozek says, quoting another developmental psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner who says: "It should be clear that being socialized is not necessarily being civilized. Nazi youth were also the products of a socialization process."

Mrozek warns about the dangers of children becoming more attached to peers than to adults, including their own parents, when they spend the day with those of their own age group.

"The concept of attachment, developed primarily by psychologist John Bowlby, denotes the instinct that causes adults to care for children and children to receive that care," she writes. "Successful early attachment is necessary for adult emotional developing.

TIME WITH ADULTS

Kids First Parents Association president Helen Ward tells IMFC: "In order for children to grow up into the mature adults we desire them to be, they have to spend time with adults they are attached to, not their own likewise immature peers."

"This means that if we take the attachment figure away – through death, illness, distractions, daycare, or any disruption in attachment relationships – and replace it with peer attachment – puff – the kid will be a 'Lord of the Flies' type because the seemingly 'socialized' behaviour is simply copying, it is not 'inside' yet," Ward says.

Neufeld warns of a "flatlining of culture" when children spend too much time with peers.

"We have a children's culture of today," he tells Mrozek. "In Europe, there is a crisis, which is that youth are not integrating into mainstream society and people believe it is happening in North America as well."

It may help to delay children's entry into school to help them develop their individuality, Neufeld says.

RESEARCH IGNORED

Despite the social science opinions that children do better outside institutional "early learning" daycares, the political push for them continues, largely because of workforce pressures, Mrozek points out.

Current public policy puts pressure on both parents to have full time jobs, Mrozek writes. "As a result, labour force attachment trumps parent-child attachment," she says.

Parents should reject a government-run "one-size-fits-all" approach to early learning, she writes.